


Thank You

by paperjamBipper



Series: Memory Lane [6]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Family Bonding, Fluff, Gen, Stan is a Softie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25271332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperjamBipper/pseuds/paperjamBipper
Summary: When Mabel singlehandedly gives Stan the thing he wants most, which is to see his twin brother again, he can't think of enough words in the english dictionary to thank her with. He wants to do something nice for her, but can't think of anything that would be enough to show her what she means to him. Based on a post made by thesnadger on tumblr regarding Stan and Mabel's relationship.
Relationships: Mabel Pines & Stan Pines
Series: Memory Lane [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830763
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Thank You

Early morning sunshine pours in through Stan’s window and shines right in his eyes. He sits up slowly, and brings his hand to his forehead. The events from last night are still fresh in his mind, and they’re repeating themselves in his brain over and over again. It’s hard to believe his 30 years of hard work finally payed off. He finally has his brother back.

And it’s all thanks to Mabel. If it had been anyone else at that button they would’ve shut it down and ruined his hard work, forcing him to start all over again. But Mabel knew better. Mabel was the only person who knew there was a good person inside him when all evidence pointed against it. She spoke the three words that went completely against the words of his brother’s journal- the one Dipper loved to stick his nose into: “I trust you”. And it was these words that gave him the thing he’s wanted most for the past thirty years.

He can’t thank her enough. Stan can’t think of anything he can do or say to show Mabel how much he appreciates her for what she’s done for him. But he knows he can try.

Stan reaches for his glasses and tosses the blanket aside as he stands up. He exits his room, and inspects each room of the house as he heads towards the stairs. His instincts tell him she’s probably still upstairs, but he wants to check around in the other rooms for her anyway. When he can’t find her in the living room or in the kitchen, he makes his way up the stairs to the attic.

He slowly opens the twins’ attic bedroom door, and sure enough he finds her sitting on her bed going through her scrapbook. Stan glances over at Dipper’s bed and finds it empty. _Figures,_ he thinks.

“Morning, sweetie” he calls to her, and she looks up from her book.

“Morning Grunkle Stan!” she says, and closes her book. “You can come in. Dipper woke up about an hour ago”

Mabel scooches over to make room as Stan sits next to her on her bed.

“What’s up?” She asks, and he smiles.

“How’s about we head down to Greasy’s Diner and get some breakfast and chocolate milkshakes?” Stan asks, and Mabel smiles.

“Ooh, yeah, that sounds great!” she says as she jumps off of her bed. “I’ll go let Dipper know” she says.

“Oh, uh, I meant just the two of us, if that’s okay” Stan says awkwardly, and Mabel stops in her tracks and turns around. She’s about to question why, but after a short moment something in her head clicks and she smiles.

“Okay, sure! That could be fun too” She says, and walks over to her dresser. She pulls a light blue sweater out of it, but then turns to Stan.

“Do you think you could step out? I need to change”

“Oh, right. Sorry” Stan says, and stands up and makes his way to the door. He closes the door behind him, and then leans on the wall next to the door. His mind begins to wander, and he immediately begins thinking about last night again. Unfortunately, he gets so deep into his thoughts that when Mabel opens the door it hits him in the face.

“Ow!” he says, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Oops, sorry Grunkle Stan” Mabel says. “You ready to go?” She asks, and Stan nods.

“Yeah, let’s go” he says, and they both make their way down the stairs. They sneak their way out the front door, and into Stan’s car. He straps in, and waits for Mabel to do the same before he drives away.

Upon arrival he parks in the first available spot, and he and Mabel hop out and head into the building.

“How many?” the hostess says.

“Two” they say in unison, and the hostess walks them over to their table. Once they’re both sitting down, the hostess walks away and Lazy Susan approaches them.

“Can I start you two off with a drink?” she asks

“Yeah…can we get two large chocolate milkshakes?”

“With whipped cream! And chocolate shavings!” Mabel exclaims.

“Okay!” Lazy Susan announces loudly as she walks away.

Mabel watches her walk behind the counter and towards the milkshake machine impatiently, and Stan tries not to laugh. He can practically read her thoughts telling Susan to add more chocolate sauce, to pile the whipped cream higher, and to double the amount of chocolate shavings as she moves on to each station. Mabel makes grabby hands at her cup when Susan brings it back over to her, and takes a huge sip out of it.

“Listen, Mabel” Stan says, and Mabel looks up from her drink.

“Hmm??”

“I want to talk to you about what happened last night”

“What? Pssh” Mabel says, throwing her hand in the air. “It’s okay. Dipper and I have seen _much_ worse since we’ve been here. Trust me” she says, taking another sip of her milkshake.

“What? No, that’s not what I meant”

“Hmm? Then what do you mean?”

“I guess…I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you for having so much faith in me”

“It’s no problem!” she says, smiling.

“Mabel, I don’t think you understand. I thought I was never going to see my brother again. You helped me achieve something I’ve been trying to do for thirty years. I just can’t- if there’s anything I can do to repay you, anything at all-” He starts, but then Mabel waves her hands in the air

“Woah, Woah Woah, Grunkle Stan! It’s okay…You don’t have to do anything for me”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, yeah! I don’t want to be treated to stuff just because I have a lot of faith in people. I want to be treated to stuff because you secretly like me more than you like Dipper!” She laughs, but then puts her hands down on the table. “Don’t tell him I said that”

Stan laughs. “Your secret’s safe with me” He says, and then takes a sip of his milkshake.

Just then, Lazy Susan walks back over. “Are you ready to order?” She almost shouts, and Mabel takes a quick scan through the menu.

“Hmm…how about a small stack of your candy pancakes…” she pauses, and then grins widely. “And a coffee omelet”

Lazy Susan opens her mouth to speak, but Stan cuts her off.

“Woah, the coffee omelet is absolutely not happening. Just a medium stack of the candy pancakes are fine” he says, and Mabel gasps exaggeratingly at him and sticks her tongue out at him. He laughs.

“As for me…I’ll get…” He pauses to look at Mabel. “The coffee omelet”

“Sure!” Susan says, and takes their menus away.

Mabel cups her hands over her mouth. “Boo, no fair! Why do you get to have the coffee omelet and I don’t?”

“Because I know what you’re like when you’re on your Mabel Juice, and that only has a drop of coffee in it”

“Oh but come on! You drink it too and you know the coffee isn’t the part that causes that”

“Yes, but I also know that your taste buds are similar to mine, and that means if you get your hands on anything with coffee in it, even eggs, that you’re going to dump a bunch of sugar on it”

Mabel gets an idea, and then pouts exaggeratingly. “I bet Grunkle Ford would let me buy one”

Stan raises an eyebrow in confusion at her comment, but then he grins once he realizes what she meant. “Nice try” he says, reaching over the table to ruffle her hair. “But that’s not gonna work because it’s not even true. You see what he wrote in his journal about you? He probably wouldn’t even want you to be eating the candy pancakes if he were here.”

“Wha-” she starts, but then realizes what he’s talking about. “Well, it’s not MY fault I had been eating raw sugar before he checked on my diet. I didn’t know he did it in the first place. If I had I could’ve eaten a bunch of carrots and stuff beforehand. Always works for the doctor at home!”

“I believe you” Stan says as Lazy Susan places his food in front of him. “But Ford wouldn’t. Not since you spit glitter in his face” He takes a bite of the omelet.

“I didn’t spit it in his face.” Mabel says, but then mutters “I coughed some up and it got all over his face”

Stan laughs, but then smacks Mabel’s fork away as he catches her trying to sneak a bite of his omelet. “Don’t change the subject. You’re still not gettin’ any”

“Fine” Mabel pouts again, and just then Lazy Susan places her stack of pancakes in front of her. They’re bigger than she expected, so she uses that to her advantage. “Then you’re not getting any of my pancakes” She says, stabbing her fork through the pancake at the top of the stack and taking a bite of it.

“Fine” Stan says, mocking her pout.

They spend most of the breakfast going back like this, but Mabel gives up when Stan finishes off the omelet and she realizes he was being serious. As she finishes up her stack of pancakes, they switch to something more lighthearted, and by the time she’s finished, her face is covered in maple syrup and they’re both laughing.

“Say…” Stan says, glancing out the window. “You wanna go do somethin’ else? Maybe head down to the lake? And then maybe bowling?”

Mabel gasps loudly. “Grunkle Stan, are you asking me out on a date? Are you gonna ask for my hand in marriage at the lake?” She shoves his arm. “I’d love to!” she says loudly, and giggles. “I’m gonna go wash my face. You can wait in the car for me if you want”. She hops out of her seat, and walks towards the bathroom. Stan watches for a moment with a warm smile before he gets up and heads out the door towards the car.

Stan sits in the car for a few minutes in silence while he waits for Mabel to come back, and once again his mind begins to wander. This time however, his mind only chooses to focus on Mabel. Not just what she did for him last night, but just Mabel in general. What kind of person she is. Her innate ability to sew a sweater together in less than two hours. What she’s done since she’s arrived in town. What she looked like when she was a baby compared to what she looks like now. How lucky he is to have someone like her.

The sudden slam of the car door next to him startles him, and he glances over to see Mabel getting back into the car.

“You ready to go?” Mabel asks, smiling, and Stan smiles back at her.

“Let’s do this” he says as he pulls away from the diner and heads towards the lake.

Once there, Mabel waits in the car while Stan goes to check where he left his boat. She leans against the window, and this time her mind begins to wander about last night’s event. If she had sided with Dipper and pressed the button, Stan would never be able to see his brother again. It was because of her they would be able to work things out and be best friends again. She smiles, and a knock on the window next to hers snaps her out of her thoughts.

“Hey, I found the-” Stan starts as he opens the car door, but pauses. “What are you smiling about?” He asks, and Mabel opens her door and jumps out of it.

“Oh, you know…” She says with a smirk, and brings four fingers in the shape of roundish square glasses up to her face.

“Heh, you’ve been thinking about it a lot too?” He ruffles her hair. “Come on you little rascal, the boat’s this way”

Stan leads Mabel to a small, worn out boat at the end of the dock. Seeing the name “Stan-O-War” painted across it in childish letters made his chest hurt with sadness in remembering the conversation he had had with Ford after the kids went to bed, but Mabel’s giggle upon seeing the same name eased it a little.

“I get it now! And earlier this summer Dipper and I had thought it was some kind of joke we didn’t understand or something”. Mabel jumps in and sits down. She pats the spot next to her, but Stan shakes his head.

“Not without lifejackets we’re not. Stay here.” Stan says, and heads towards the small store near the fishing spot’s entrance. Mabel looks down at the clear water, and reaches to touch it. Her reflection bounces, and she smiles as she remembers the last time she and Dipper had come down here with Stan. Her mind doesn’t wander too much, as when Stan comes back and tries to hit her in the face with her life jacket, she catches it. She puts it on, and Stan does the same before jumping in to sit next to her.

“Here, I also got you one of these” He says, and hands her a small fishing rod. He places his down in his seat, and turns around. He pulls at the rope on the boat’s engine before it hums to life, and takes the boat out to the middle of the lake.

There are a few boats out in the water here and there, but without Manly Dan’s presence or Mcgucket out on the beach yelling about some monster he saw in the water, the lake seems pretty quiet. Stan drops his line in the water, and Mabel copies him. This is the most relaxed Stan has felt in weeks. The portal is done, Stanford is free, and now he doesn’t have to worry about anything else. Sure, Stanford’s still angry at him, and there’s a chance the two of them won’t speak ever again. But even if that is true, Stan knows he’ll always have the twins, and that’s good enough for him.

After a while of waiting, Stan hears Mabel yawn, and looks over to see her sitting with her head in her arms on the side of the boat. Her fishing rod, although her line is still in the water, is sitting next to her. He knows she hadn’t meant to yawn loud enough for him to hear, but he can tell she’s bored out of her mind.

He tries to think of a way to keep her entertained, and then grins when an idea comes to her head.

“You know, I still got that LOSER shirt back at the shack”

Mabel looks at him, lost for a second, but then smirks when she realizes what she means processes through her head.

“Oh yeah?” She asks in a cocky tone. “Well what do you want to do about it?”

“How’s about we make a bet?” Stan says, pausing to look around the lake. When he sees a crowd of boats all anchored in the same area, he points to them. “I take the boat over there, and we try to catch as many fish as we can”

“Got it. The one with the most-” Mabel starts, but Stan cuts her off.

“Ah, but here’s the catch. Since there’s a lot of people over there, that means it’s a good spot to catch a lot of fish. So instead of trying to catch the most fish, you gotta catch the biggest fish. If I win, you gotta wear the loser shirt for the rest of the summer.”

“And if I win…” Mabel starts before he can dismiss the possibility, “You AND Grunkle Ford have to do an apology dance. In matching jumpsuits”

Stan snickers. “Kid, I’ve gone fishing hundreds of times. I know all the tricks to getting the fish to come to you. If you think you have any chance of catching a bigger fish than me…” He pauses, and holds out his hand. “You’ve got a deal!” He laughs, and holds out his hand. Mabel shakes it, and then Stan goes to work on the engine again. Mabel grabs her fishing rod, and then waits patiently for the boat to start up. Once it does, Stan speeds over to the fishing spot as fast as his boat can manage.

Once there, he adjusts his seat next to Mabel, and takes his own fishing rod in his hand. Mabel goes to toss hers in, but Stan stops her.

“No, we gotta do it at the same time it’s only-” He stops, and casts his fishing line as far away as he can.

“Hey! No fair!” Mabel shouts, and drops her fishing line into the water right next to the boat. Stan starts to laugh, but closes his mouth when she immediately begins reeling her line in. When the fish she reels in turns out to be pretty small, he begins laughing again. He feels a tug on his line, and begins pulling it in. When his fish turns out to be smaller than Mabel’s, she starts laughing at him.

“Hardy Haw Haw” he mocks her, and tosses his fish back in the water.

This goes on for a while. The two of them keep catching fish that are smaller than the last, until Stan catches a medium sized fish that’s larger than the fish Mabel had first caught.

“Whelp, I guess it’s clear to see who won. Let’s head back to collect your prize for second place, shall we?” Stan says, and Mabel’s about to open her mouth to comment when her fishing rod suddenly jerks forward and she almost falls out of the boat.

“Um…Grunkle Stan?” Mabel’s voice strains as she struggles to keep the rod in her hand. “Grunkle Stan? A little help?” She asks, and Stan scoffs.

“Pssh, yeah right. _Now_ you’re catching a huge fish. Like I’m buying that” He says, and continues to work on the engine.

“Grunkle Stan, I’m not kidding!” She says, and is slammed against the side of the boat. Stan turns around, and when he sees how hard she’s struggling, he realizes that she’s probably telling the truth. He stands behind her and grabs on to the pole, and is surprised by how heavy the rod is.

“Okay sweetie, on the count of three we’re going to have to pull together. Ready?” He pauses. “Three!” he yells, and he and Mabel pull as hard as they can. Suddenly, a fish the size of the boat jumps out of the water and Stan lets go of the rod in shock. Mabel, who is still gripping on to the rod, gets dragged by the fish over the boat and into the water.

“Mabel!” Stan yells, and leans over the boat to look for her. She suddenly pops out of the water, and spits a bunch of lake water out. He holds out his hand again, and she grips it as she flops back into the boat.

“Are you okay?” Stan asks, and Mabel looks down at her lap.

“I am now…” She pauses, and whips her head up and points at him. “THAT I’VE WON THE BET! HA HA!” she yells, and then begins squeezing the water out of her hair.

Stan opens his mouth, but then closes it and pouts. “Yeah, yeah. Now let’s get out of here before something like that happens again.

“Agreed” Mabel says, and they speed out of the area as fast as possible. Stan sloppily parks the boat at the dock. They run for the car, and Stan speeds away from the lake as fast as humanely possible.

“Where to next? Maybe somewhere that’s NOT infested with creatures that want to hurt us?” Mabel asks, gripping her seat in the car.

“Yeah, yeah, that seems like a good idea” Stan says, just as shaken up about it as she is. Mabel leans out the window, and perks up when she sees a bowling alley pass by.

“How about the bowling alley?” She asks, and Stan screeches to a stop.

“Yeah, what a great idea!” Stan says, and makes a U-turn. He turns into the bowling alley parking lot, parks the car and the two of them head inside.

“I’ll go get the shoes. You sit down and set up the game”

“Okay!” Mabel says, and skips off to find an available lane. Stan walks up to the counter. “Two, please” he says, and hands the man behind the counter his credit card. The man hands him two pairs of shoes, one small and one large, and Stan walks off to find where Mabel went. When he sees a TV with “loser” displayed under her name, he walks over to her and stands over her with his arms crossed. When she glances up and sees him pouting and scrunching his face in as much as possible, she giggles.

“What? I put your name in first” she says, and relaxes back in her seat. “Go on, loser” she smirks, and Stan glares at her before stepping up to grab a ball. When he throws a strike, she cups her hands over her mouth and boos at him. He smiles, and cockily closes his eyes to throw his second ball. When he only manages to wiggle one pin in the back corner, Mabel snickers at him.

“I’d like to see you do any better” he says, and shoves her lightly when they switch places. She elbows him back, and he rolls his eyes playfully. She rolls a strike too, and then knocks down another five pins.

“How’s that for better?” Mabel asks, and blows a raspberry at Stan as she sits back down on the bench.

Stan throws the ball down the lane so hard it bounces down the lane, but he still gets a strike nonetheless. Upon shooting his second, he gets another strike, and does a cocky dance before returning to his seat.

“Who’s the loser now?” He asks, and sits down on the bench and puts his hands behind his head.

“Remember that giant fish I caught that was probably 50 times the size of yours? I bet I can get 50 times your score before the first round is over” She stands up and walks over to the lane. Just as she picks up a ball, she turns around to look at him. “I’ll save your dignity and say I was joking about the bet”. She tosses the ball, but it misses and rolls down the gutter slowly.

“Haha, yeah. _My_ dignity is the one that needs to be spared.” Stan slams his fist down on the bench. “Ha! SPARED! I’m on FIRE!” He shouts, and jumps up to switch places with her.

The two of them continue to spend more time focused on ripping on each other than playing the actual game, and this results in an exact tie at the end of the game. They try to play another round, and this time Mabel wins by one point.

“Yes! Yes! YES!” Mabel says, jumping up on the bench and pumping her fists in the air. Stan crosses his arms.

“All that happened was you got lucky. No big deal”

“No, what happened was you tried to show off by throwing a ball in between your legs while looking at me for the last three rounds”

“At least I got a strike in the last round”

“I still won”

“Whatever” Stan says as he puts his normal sneakers back on. Mabel does the same, and they walk back to the counter to return them. Just as they’re about to leave, a brightly colored flash of light catches Mabel’s attention. She turns around and notices a small arrangement of arcade games in the back of the building. She tugs on Stan’s arm, and he turns around.

“What’s-” He starts, but stops when he sees what she’s looking at. He’s about to open his mouth to say something, but when she gives him her puppy eyes, he sighs. “Fine” he says, and hands her a $20 bill.

“No Grunkle Stan, I want you to come with me!” She says, and takes him by the hand and drags him over to the arcade. “The more people playing together the more tickets you’ll win!”

She walks over to the token machine, and places the $20 inside. When the coins spit out a bunch of coins, she places them in two separate cups and hands one to Stan. He takes it from her, and with her free hand she drags him over to a ticket wheel.

“Here, try this one! I’ve never been able to spin it hard enough to win the jackpot. But you can!” She says, but then stops to think. “Probably. I don’t actually know how these games work” she says, and places three coins into it. She steps aside for Stan to use the machine, and gives him two thumbs up. He smiles, and pulls the lever. It stops on the jackpot space and Mabel gasps, but then it inches forward a bit and lands on the spot that only awards 2 tickets.

“Aw, boo” she says. “I guess it really is just hard to win, then”. She pauses, looking at the machine for a second, and then walks off to play a different game. Stan watches her as she plays a game that looks twice as hard as that wheel, and then as 50 tickets spit out of it.

He frowns, and places three of his own coins into the machine. He pulls the lever as hard as he can without breaking the machine, and the same thing happens. It screeches to a stop on the jackpot, and then it pushes itself onto the 2 spot again.

“Bah” Stan scoffs, and then walks off to find Mabel.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel chimes, and Stan turns around to see Mabel standing in front of a machine with tickets pouring out of it. When she sees him, she waves her hands in the air. “Grunkle Stan, come here!” She says, and Stan smiles and walks over to her.

“Watch this! I’m soo good at this game!” She says, and places a coin inside. Her hand hovers over a button, and she sticks her tongue out. Stan chuckles lightly, but then Mabel sticks her tongue back in her mouth and slams her hand down on it. “JACKPOT” is displayed on the screen in big, flashing red letters.

“YES! Three times in a row!” She says, and pumps her arms out in excitement. She accidentally punches Stan in the stomach, who gasps, and she laughs. “Oops, sorry Grunkle Stan” she says, and he laughs.

“It’s alright”

Once the tickets are done pouring out, Mabel shoves them in a clear plastic bag, which appears to already be stuffed to the rim with tickets.

“That all from this one game?” He asks, and she laughs.

“No, this is around the arcade. Haven’t you been playing anything?”

Stan looks behind him and glares at the large wheel machine. “I guess not”

“Great! Then I know there’s a game here you’ll like, come on!” She says, and grabs his arm. She drags him over to a machine with an artificial fishing rod attached to it, and starts snickering.

“Ha ha ha” Stan says sarcastically, and tries to walk away.

“No, Stan, I’m not kidding. I think you would like it! You just put your coin in and try to catch as many fish as you can in 45 seconds. Aaandd….” She pauses, and then points at a golden fish glowing white that moves very fast across the screen. “If you get that one, you get a bonus 300 tickets. Good luck!” She says, and skips away.

Stan places his coin in, and begins reeling as fast as he can. He sticks his tongue out, mocking Mabel, and waits for a gap in the water. Once a small gap appears, he turns the reel as fast as he can, and latches on to the golden one just as it appears on screen. He had only meant to grab a larger fish closer to the bottom of the screen, and he throws his arms in the air silently. He reels the fish the rest of the way in and “JACKPOT” is displayed across the screen.

“Yes! Take that!” He says, and then grabs the tickets once they’re finished coming out. He walks by the wheel machine on his way to look for another machine, and he kicks it. He watches the wheel fix itself and adjust back to the “JACKPOT” spot, but no tickets come out. Stan rolls his eyes and walks away. When he finds Mabel intensely playing what looks like a non-ticket game, he decides to leave her alone and try to find some other games. He plays a few more random ticket games, but after a while of not winning jackpots, he decides to try his last quarter on the game Mabel had shown him earlier. He sticks his quarter in, waits a few seconds, and then hits his hands down on the button.

To no avail.

He still gets 20 tickets out of the machine, which he places in the plastic bag Mabel gave him. He’s about to look for her, but when he turns around he bumps right into her.

“There you are! Are you all done?” She asks, and he holds up his plastic bag full of tickets. “Great! Let’s go turn these in. I already see something I like and with THESE…” she pauses to hold up two full bags of tickets. “Combined with yours…” she pauses again to kick Stan’s bag. “I’m sure we’ll have more than enough to get it” She picks up Stan’s ticket bag from the floor, and she heads over to the ticket counter. Stan follows closely behind her.

“I’d like you to count these, please” Mabel says to the man behind the counter. “All of them”

The man takes the bags from her just as Stan reaches the counter. The man dumps the bag into a plastic bucket and places them on a scale to count them automatically.

“Looks liikee….3,475 tickets.”

“Great! Then I’ll take that big pig plush right there, please” Mabel says, pointing at the large pig stuffed animal on the top shelf.

“Ooh, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t have that” he says, and Mabel’s smile fades.

“What?” she and Stan say at the same time, but Stan sounds angrier about it than Mabel does.

“Yeah. That pig up there’s 3480. You’re five short”

“What?” Stan says again, leaning over the counter, but Mabel places her hand on his arm.

“No, Stan. It’s okay. I can just…” she pauses, and then points at a package of a cap gun that comes with two full packets of caps for 1,000. “Get two of those”

“Of course” the man says, and hands them to her. “Anything else? You’ve still got 1,475 left.”

“No, I’m okay. Thank you” Mabel says, and takes the two packages. She turns to Stan. “I’m gonna go wait in the car. If you want anything with the rest of my tickets you can have them.” She slumps away from the counter, and shoves herself against the door to open it.

Stan immediately shoves his finger in the man’s face. “You’ve got _some nerve_.” He says, and runs after Mabel. She’s already in the car, and she’s leaning on the window sadly. He approaches the car slowly, and notices that she just randomly tossed the two packets in the back of the car. He opens the back door of the car, and Mabel jumps when she does.

“Oh, hey Grunkle Stan. Did you get anything?”

“No, but I have to run back in real quick. I-I think I forgot my wallet in there” He lies, and quietly slips the two packets in his jacket.

“Oh.” Mabel pauses, and then leans against the window again. “I hope you find it” She says, and Stan closes the door. He glances back at her as he makes his way back to the building, and when he sees her sniffle, his anger deepens and he begins stomping into the building. He stomps right up to the counter and smacks his hand down really hard.

“Hey!” he snarls, and the man turns around.

“Sir, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t yell at me”

“No, I will yell at you. You know why? You made my niece upset. And _nobody_ messes with my family.”

The man places his hand on his chest and laughs. “How did I make your niece upset?”

“You denied her of that pig she wanted”

“She didn’t have enough for it”

“She was short five! Five! I’d get it if it were 15 or 20, but five?”

“Sir, it’s the rules”

Stan sighs heavily and places the two packets on the counter. “Well she doesn’t want these. Is there any way you can exchange these two things for that pig?”

“Sir. Even if I did take these back, she’d still be five short”

“How much do you make?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much do you make?” Stan repeats, pulling out his wallet.

“Why?”

“I’ll match it for the pig.”

“Sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me. Tell me how much you pay and I won’t tell your manager you made a 12 year old girl cry”

The man looks around for someone, and leans forward. “Alright, I earn $8.80 an hour and this is a five hour shift. But you have to promise me you won’t tell my boss about this”

“Yeah, yeah.” Stan says, and slaps $44 on the counter. “Now hand over the pig” He says, and the man stands up on his tiptoes to reach the pig on the top shelf. He hands it to Stan, who hands him another dollar.

“And this is to make sure it doesn’t happen again” he says, and walks out the door. As he approaches the car, he notices that Mabel’s still leaning on the window. She doesn’t seem as upset as she did, but she’s staring off into space, so there’s no way for Stan to tell for sure. He approaches her window and knocks on it, and she looks over and rolls down the window.

“Hey, did you…” She starts, but then pauses when she sees the stuffed animal tucked under his arm. Her large grin returns, and she opens her door and jumps out.

“Grunkle Stan! You went back to get him for me! Thank you thank you thank you!” she says, and throws her arms around him in a hug. She squeezes tightly, and then grabs the pig from under Stan’s arms. “I’m calling YOU Waddles Jr.” She says, and hops back in the car and closes the door. Stan smiles as he watches her snuggle up to it, and he walks around and gets in the driver’s side of the car.

“Anywhere else you want to go?” Stan asks, but when he looks over and sees that she fell asleep on her pig plush, he smiles. “Home it is” he says, and makes his way back to the shack.

Once he’s back at the Shack, he carries her gently into the living room and places her down on the floor. He places her new stuffed animal under her head, and makes his way over to his recliner and lies down.

___

Dipper walks into the living room, looking for Stan. When he sees him lying in his recliner, he steps into the living room, “Grunkle Stan? I think Great Uncle Ford is looking for y…” he starts, but stops when he sees Mabel asleep on the floor. Upon looking closer, he notices that Stan is asleep as well. Confused, he looks over at the clock above Stan’s seat. When he discovers it’s only 3, he backs out of the room slowly to leave the two of them alone.


End file.
